


Possession

by etben



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 17:51:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etben/pseuds/etben
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The five possessions of the Impala.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Possession

**Author's Note:**

> Written for highwaymiles.

By Sam's count, the car's been possessed four times since they got it.

It was possessed when they bought it, of course—that was dad's idea of a birthday present. _Happy Birthday, Dean! Here's a car. Don't worry if it moves on its own—that's just the spirit inhabiting it._ Sam would have hated it, probably, but Dean had been thrilled. He'd headed straight out to the driveway with his shotgun in hand, chanting Latin and dodging easily when the car snapped into reverse and tried to run him over. For him, the challenge seemed to be just another part of the fun, a sign that Dad trusted him. For Sam, it was yet another hoop to jump through, another ridiculous expectation—but wait.

He's getting ahead of himself, here. When they got the car, he was only 11, still young enough to think that Dad was God and Dean was the coolest person ever.

So the car was possessed, and Dean was obsessed, and Sam just sat and watched it all from the heavily-warded porch, munching on an apple. He'd laughed himself sick when Dean slipped in the mud, yelled out taunts and jeers when the car caught Dean's shirt in its doors and ripped it almost in half. When Dean had finally pinned it, Sam had watched the flicker-flash of the spirit as it fled, screaming, and he'd cheered. He'd even helped Dean clean off the mud, after.

The second possession had happened two days after that, because Dean had screwed up the wards—he'd set them with the car's windows up, and then left Sam in the car with the windows down while he went in to flirt with Amanda, who worked the meat counter at the grocery store and always gave them extra salami. Sam had done the exorcism, that time—the books were all still in the backseat, and he'd read out the incantations as the car spun in circles in the parking lot. _Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde_, while the parking lot whirled around him, faster and faster.

Dean had yelled at him, of course—_you little shit_ and _I trusted you_ and _you're so grounded, wait until Dad hears_. The crowd had frowned, a little, because discipline was discipline but you couldn't blame a kid for a little joyride, and anyway no harm done, not really. Still, that was life, and nobody was going to interfere with the way John Winchester was raising his children, even if the whispers did say he was sometimes too strict with them, sometimes the kind of strict that left bruises. Man had a right to do as he pleased with his own children, after all.

Sam had shrugged and stared at the ground, and gotten obediently back into the car when Dean pointed. They'd driven out of the parking lot in silence, faces turned carefully away from each other until Dean pulled into the parking lot of the ice cream place and burst out laughing, drumming his hands on the steering wheel and throwing back his head.

"Hot _damn_, Sammy," he'd said, "that's my boy!" His hug had lifted Sam all the way out of his seat and into Dean's lap, and his voice had been loud in Sam's ear. He smelled like sweat and sun and endless summer highway. Then they'd gone inside, and he'd bought Sam ice cream: two scoops, one vanilla and one chocolate, and he hadn't even complained when Sam dripped a little on the seat.

When they told Dad the story, he'd smiled and set one heavy and on Sam's head, ruffling his hair, while he asked Dean if he'd seen any signs of warlocks, down in town.

The third possession had happened when Sam was in high school—a werewolf, cast out of its own body when Dad killed it, had managed to stick its spirit in the car, smashing through the wards any which way. They'd noticed it the next day, when the car had tried to eat Sam—not that a car had a digestive tract, or even a mouth, but that didn't seem to matter. It had slammed the doors shut with Sam inside and sealed the air vents, somehow, trying to asphyxiate him.

They'd cast that one out together, him and Dean, Sam inside and Dean outside, chanting in unison the words they both knew better than they knew their eight times tables. When it had finally caught, the spirit had left with a roar and a rush of musty grave-smell that left Sam choking in the backseat. Dean had thrown the doors open, casting curls of smoke everywhere, and tugged Sam out into the yard, holding him close, watching over his shoulder in case it came back.

Dad hadn't said anything about it, just pointed out that the car was getting smelly and maybe Dean should think about cleaning it out. They'd spent the whole summer on it, working silently together—the last long period of time they spent together for years.

The fourth possession was when Sam was at Stanford. He doesn't know much about it, though, just like he doesn't know much about anything Dad and Dean did in those years. One day Dad had left a message on his machine, saying that the Impala had been possessed and Dean would maybe need to crash with Sam for a day or two while they looked for a way to fix it. Sam had cleaned his room that night, and then thrown all his clothes back on the floor, and then stared out at the road outside his dorm until three in the morning, one hand on the bottle of holy water he'd never gotten rid of. The next morning, he'd woken up to sleeveprints on his face and a message on his voicemail: Dean's voice, hoarse and scratchy, saying that the car was fine, nothing to worry about, he wouldn't be bothering Sam that week. Sam saved the message for two and a half years, until his phone fell in a lake in Minnesota and he had to replace it.

And now the car's possessed again, bringing them up to five possessions in a little over ten years. That's not so bad, considering their line of work; frankly, Sam's surprised it hasn't happened more often.

This time, though, is different from the other times. The car's not trying to kill anyone, for one; it's not even trying to endanger them. If anything, it's being too safe—never going over the speed limit, stopping at intersections and waiting its turn, putting their seatbelts on for them, turning on the headlights when they're driving across Montana at two in the morning. It's pulling on to the shoulder when the highway patrol comes racing by, and last night it kept on driving when Dean tried to pull into the parking lot of the Roll-N Saloon. It spits out Dean's casettes, and keeps the radio stuck on a station that plays Frank Sinatra all day long.

And Dean, who faces possessions with the same _fuck you_ grin he brings to everything else, is seriously losing his shit over this one. Exorcisms aren't taking, for whatever reason, and he's started to mutter about selling the car, trading it in for something that "isn't such a goddamn piece of crap."

He's off in the bathroom at a Stop-n-Shop, somewhere in Ohio, and Sam's sitting on the hood of the car. It's a nice day—white puffy clouds hurrying across the sky, sun shining, a little breeze, just warm enough to be comfortable. Sam folds his hands behind his head and closes his eyes.

"The thing is," he says, staring at the red on the backs of his eyelids, "it's not like we don't appreciate what you're doing." The car shivers under him, and he smiles. "Yeah, I know, but that's just talk—he's always like this, when it's something he can't understand. Remember the dancing shoes?" Another shiver, rumbling up through the warm metal against his back.

"Yeah, like that. But he—" The car trembles again, and Sam sighs. "_We_ have a job to do, a job that not many people can handle, and sometimes that means doing things that aren't quite safe. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be careful, but we need to be able to make those decisions for ourselves, you know?" Suddenly, there's a shadow looming over him, cutting through his light.

"Sammy?" Sam cracks his eyes open, glares up at Dean. "You know, I'm cool with the visions and the freaky powers and shit, man, but if you're going to start talking to people who aren't there—"

"Chill out, Dean," he says, rolling off the other side of the car, "it's nothing. Did you get something to eat?" Dean's looking back at him with his _who, me?_ wide-eyed stare, the one that hasn't convinced Sam of anything since the time Dean got him to eat the neighbor's cat's food. Sam sighs and heads back to the store, shaking his head.

Behind him, he hears the rumble of the car's engine starting, and the blare of one of Dean's tapes at top volume.

"You could have left the radio, you know," he says, and the air around him laughs.


End file.
